European booksellers, who support the objectives of the EC’s Digital Single Market Strategy, said they need more time ‘to assess consumer demand and to solve technical problems, which, for the moment still hamper cross-border sales’.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the EC’s Digital Single Market Strategy proposes that European citizens should be able to access and purchase digital content throughout the EU unhampered by geoblocking.

The EIBF said in the petition: ‘In a nascent market, the profitability of which still has to be demonstrated, forcing traders to offer ebooks across borders at this point in time would, in the end, be detrimental to European consumers: many SMEs could be forced to exit the ebook market and far from opening up the single market to consumers, this would be highly detrimental to cultural diversity and consumer choice in the EU, and only beneficial to major non-European international platforms.’